


Warmth

by PotatoeGoddess



Category: Naruto
Genre: BAMF Haruno Sakura, Character Development, F/F, Gen, Light Angst, Mostly Gen, Not Beta Read, Sakura Centric, Sakura gets a tragic backstory too, Sakura gets some fresh hot character development, haruno sakura kicking ass, i don't know how to tag, orphan sakura, title might change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-03-10 23:23:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13511919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PotatoeGoddess/pseuds/PotatoeGoddess
Summary: Sakura Haruno was born screaming and kicking and in some ways, she felt, she kind of never stopped.





	1. In Which Sakura Makes and Breaks Friendships

**Author's Note:**

> I am a simple woman with a simple love for Sakura, thanks? please be kind

Sakura Haruno was born screaming and kicking and in some ways, she felt, she kind of never stopped. She was an emotional child, fits of happiness and rage were common occurrences and due to this, her parents never once considered a second child. When she was two years old she bit her seven year old cousin so hard he bled, and as her mouth filled with blood, she giggled, delighted. She was smarter than other kids her age, by the time she was three she could read and write and tell you all about the different exports of the different villages ultimately led to the poor political climate so common in her land. Her parents were merchants, and because of this she had undue amounts of trading knowledge collected in her small, three year old brain.  


She made decisions rashly, and never once in her life backed down. Her decision to be a ninja was abrupt and lackluster. She watched a person jump from roof to roof when she was four and then promptly after, presented her parents with the registration papers for the ninja academy, politely informing them that she was going to be a shinobi. They signed the papers a few weeks later, and that was that.  


On her first day of school she packed her own lunch, got dressed all on her own, and left before her parents had finished breakfast. The academy was large, but her ego was larger and, with all the confidence a five year old could muster, she walked through the gates. Her class was loud, and stupid and she was the only one who could read and write well. Lunch was boring, all she’d packed herself was rice which she finished quickly. Angry, she threw her lunch box on the ground and punched the person nearest to her, a little black haired boy who had been eating his lunch on a bench adjacent to hers. For the first time she could remember though, someone punched her back. Right after her fist connected with the boy’s face, a smaller one launched itself at hers. She looked at the boy intensely for a second and came to a decision.  


“I’m Sakura Haruno and we’re friends now.” She declared as she wiped the blood from her lip and smiled. She looked around, expecting an adult to come rushing, as they always did when she got into fights. No adults came and she smiled even larger at the black haired boy. Sakura had never tried to make a friend before, but she liked this boy, he punched her and that took guts, she figured.  


“We are?” The boy said hesitantly.  


“Yeah, come help me climb the tree by the swings!” She yelled as she darted off, confident he would follow.  
Later when Sasuke Uchiha’s older brother asked him if he had made any friends, he said yes, and was mostly sure he was telling the truth.

Sakura and Sasuke’s friendship was short lived. When Sakura was six years old her parents died in a mudslide, and not knowing how to tell Sasuke, she decided to ignore him. He was mostly indifferent to this, and went back to eating his lunches alone. Sakura, meanwhile, was angry, but there was no one to direct the anger at, and so mostly, she was just sad. Her aunt and uncle were nice, but they weren’t her parents and she hated them for it. At six, Sakura decided she felt incredibly and profoundly old and tired. Sometimes she almost felt like she needed a cane just to move. She was bored in school and bored during lunch and bored during dinner as her aunt and uncle and cousin talked about stupid things that had no meaning and she was sick of it. Kids had started being mean to her at school, and it hurt and it made her angry that it hurt because they were stupid and she was even stupider for being hurt. And then Ino came along.  
She was crying because some kids had told her she had a big forehead, which she did, she knew, but it was her forehead and it wasn’t like she could just go and get another one. Then came Ino. She was the brightest thing Sakura had ever seen and she decided then, that she probably ever would see. Ino gave her a bow for her hair and Sakura knew then that she would undoubtedly follow her to the ends of the earth. Ino liked weird things though, decided Sakura, like poisons and plants and yelling bad words on the roof tops and Sakura pretended to like them too for her sake. Sakura liked weird things, Ino concluded at the same time, like fighting and tree climbing and digging up big rocks from the ground, and Ino went along with it, for her sake. All and all, Sakura and Ino felt they would probably be buried in the same grave and friends until they died and then even after that.  


They were not. When they were ten they had a dramatic split, having both decided they liked Sasuke. They didn’t really, but at that point Sasuke had become something of a social pariah due to certain events and they both adored the idea of falling in love with the boy no one else liked. Sakura regretted it almost instantaneously, but she hadn’t backed down from anything in her short life and wasn’t about to start then. It was around this time that Naruto transferred into their class and though Sakura would never admit, she liked him from the moment he entered the classroom, throwing a stink bomb and declaring himself to be the next hokage. He was weird. He wouldn’t hit her back when she hit him, and always looked like a kicked puppy when she did so which made her feel bad (a feeling she was mostly unaccustomed to). She ate lunch with him sometimes anyway, she liked how loud and bright he was.  


Without Ino though, she was falling back the ‘post parent fugue state’ as she had so aptly named it, and wasn’t sure what to do about it. She envied Sasuke in some ways, from what she figured, there was someone to blame for his parent’s death. She only had a mountain to blame and she wasn’t sure if she could really blame a mountain, it just didn’t seem feasible short term or long term. She trained a fair amount however, even in her fugue state, but mostly she felt listless, wanting to do something, but unable to muster the energy. The two years between her split with Ino and graduation, passed by in a blur, with brief flashes of brightness when she encountered her former best friend. She liked watching Sasuke, he was pretty (but not as pretty as Ino) and she kinda sorta very much so regretted hers and Ino’s dramatic split. It was fun bugging Sasuke though, in a way it never was with Ino, when she gave him flowers he made funny faces and when she tried to sit next to him he did this thing with his shoulders that she found hilarious. The day of graduation was bright, her aunt and uncle wished her luck, made her breakfast, and with the freshly cleaned hokage mountain behind her, she felt read for the next step in her life.  


She passed, of course she passed, and she smiled smugly at Ino as she walked away with her new fancy headband that sorta itched. She saw Naruto looking like a drowned puppy on her way out and she made a face at him when he looked morosely at her. If he’d wanted to pass, he could’ve asked her for help with his clone jutsu she told herself, as she turned her back to him. She wasn’t sure her aunt and uncle understood the significance of her new headband, as they just patted her on the back and smiled when she showed it to them. She went to bed with it on her head, feeling a familiar fire within her gut rekindle as she began dreaming of punching people so hard they bled.


	2. In Which Sakura Meets a Useless Old Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've only read the manga so I'm not sure how it may differ from the anime. I'm not a super hardcore naruto fan so we'll see how AU I make this (probably very).

Sakura was smart, but not quite as smart as she thought she was. She had, after graduation, done some slapdash mental math and concluded exactly who her teammates would be and what sort of instructor she would receive. There were two civilian kids who she predicted to be the likeliest of the bunch to be on her team, and

Naruto threw those calculations in the garbage when he waved at her from beside Sasuke. A grin on his face that was simultaneously chagrined and cocky. She was annoyed, mostly at herself for her inability to consider unknown variables in the complex equation that she considered to be life, which, with all her twelve year old hubris, she reckoned she would one day be able to solve. She pushed Naruto (the supreme offender) out of the way and sat primly next to Sasuke, who was delightfully indifferent as she directed simpering faces his way. She blinked and then Naruto was sitting on the desk, ass hanging out, muddy shoes planted on the table top. She briefly wondered who was going to have to clean the large muddy splotches off it, when he was jolted forward and stole what was rightly hers.

She'd been sure for few years now that she was going to be Sasuke's first kiss, not because she wholly wanted to be ( after smelling his breath during a spar she'd thought twice), but because she'd told Ino she would be. Naruto had taken that away from her. She, and a few other kids who had hopped on to the proverbial Sasuke train when Ino (media mogul of their grade) declared him desirable number one, pummeled Naruto for this. He didn't hit back, which made Sakura hit harder. Though she felt bad as she eyed him laying slumped in the seat to her right, she didn't apologize. She was even tempted to hit him again when, a few minutes later, he had the energy and audacity to jump up and down as they were assigned on the same team. Ino smirked at her from nearby, and then quickly glared when the last member of their team was announced. Sakura cheered then, mostly to annoy Ino, but also because she very much so enjoyed winning, and this certainly felt like winning.

When Iruka was done with the teams she grabbed her bag and slowly walked out of the classroom, smiling victoriously as she did so. The second she was out of sight of her classmates she let out a loud cry and kicked the ground as hard as she could. It felt, in that moment, that she was probably the most tragic person in existence. Not only had Naruto ruined her careful calculations (they were not careful), but he had wormed his admirably loud self on to her team. _Her_ team, the one she was going to be on for the foreseeable future. As she stood fuming, she realized how much she really missed Ino as it was a lot more satisfying being loud and angry outside one’s head rather than in it.

She sat down on the nearest bench, drained, and contemplated the cards she had been dealt. At least Sasuke wasn’t completely useless; he packed a mean punch and had never laughed at her forehead like other kids had. She harbored some fantasies that one day he might even come to like her forehead, and might perhaps say something incredibly romantic about it too (. She sat on the bench for a while, fantasizing, when the man of the hour himself arrived. His downcast face seemed off, Sakura thought, as she examined him.

"Your forehead is so big and beautiful, I could kiss it." 'Sasuke' said, causing Sakura to grimace. She was pretty sure this was Naruto. The boy standing in front of her was bright and awkward in a way Sasuke hadn't been in a long time.

"Naruto, what the fuck?" She said, as he got closer.

"Sa-sakura, haha what you talking about, it's me, Sasuke." to further ruin the effect he couldn't even say Sasuke's name without  grimacing.  
"Buzz off I'm going to be seeing you in like fifteen minutes anyway." while she said this Naruto/Sasuke's face got progressively more and more pained, and with the final parting words, "I've got the runs!" He sprinted away.

Naruto was an idiot, Sakura thought, but at least he was entertaining.  
She sat back down on the bench, having stood up to confront the not Sasuke, and tried to plan out her years until she reached chunin. Then Sasuke (?) reappeared. And now she really wasn't sure what was going on.

"Sakura, where's the dipshit? Recess is almost over." That seemed like a Sasuke like thing to say, which further confused the situation. She quickly thought of a way to deduce who it was.

"Enough about Naruto, if he had his way my life would be miserable. He’s just so horrible isn’t he? He just wasn’t raised right.” She fluttered her eyelashes, giving him an intense stare. Sasuke(?) stared right back and proceeded to defend Naruto.

“You know he doesn’t have any parents don’t you?” He said, quietly and quickly, giving her a sharp look. She still wasn’t sure who it was, so she shrugged her shoulders and continued.

“I wish I didn’t have parents, I would get in so much trouble for pulling the kind of pranks he does.” Her parents had actually been mostly amused by all the shit she had done as a kid, and her aunt and uncle weren't good authority figures.

“Children who grow up without parents only end up cold and lonely.” He spat. She began to speak, but he cut her off.

“You make me sick.” He said, storming off. Sakura was hurt despite herself, and wondered if perhaps she had been too harsh. It was definitely Sasuke though, Naruto knew she didn’t have parents too.

She had trouble meeting both Sasuke’s and Naruto’s eyes later, when they sat in the classroom waiting for a teacher who they were beginning to doubt the existence of. Sakura was getting pretty pissed, and when Naruto went to set a chalkboard eraser between the sliding door, she helpfully added,

“The one on the other side of class has colored chalk on it too.” Naruto grinned at her and ran to get the other one.

“As if an elite Jounin would fall for such a trap.” contributed Sasuke, looking gloomily out the window. A few seconds later, the so called elite jounin did just that. Sakura was pretty sure that this wasn’t a coincidence, but either way, Sakura decided, this was the most useless old man she had ever had the misfortune of meeting. As the gray haired jackass stared at them, Sakura claimed her innocence, pointed to Naruto, who looked betrayed, and ratted him out.

“My first impression is,” He paused dramatically, “I hate you. Meet me on the roof in five.” and then there was no longer a man standing there.

“Race you!” Naruto called. He got a head start but Sasuke was quick on his tail, and they both looked like absolute idiots. Sakura took the fire escape and arrived a few seconds before the both of them. She tried to not appear out of breath when the two of them bolted out of the staircase.  
The old(?) ninja had them introduce themselves, after giving them some non answers about himself. Naruto said something about Ramen and Sakura made some faces at Sasuke who said something about revenge. Sakura wasn’t paying that close of attention, she thought it was more prudent to keep her eye on her new sensei, who was hard to read. His eyes were sad, which she thought was a bit pathetic and his shoulders were very purposefully hunched. He was weird.

He told them what they would be doing, now that they were a team, handing them some papers with a time and place to meet him at. Then came the most uselessly dramatic reveal Sakura had ever heard. Only 33 percent pass my ass, she thought as she watched her new teacher disappear again. Before her teammates could scamper off she grabbed Naruto by the collar of his shirt.

“Wait, Sasuke, let’s discuss strategies.” She said in her special voice she reserved just for him.

“I don’t need help from you and the dipshit.” he announced, with a sort of false neutralness she’d come to expect from him. He walked away then with his hands in his pockets and an undue smugness. Sakura stuck her tongue out at his turned back and held tighter onto Naruto’s shirt.

“Sakura, I’ve gotta go train! Let me go!” Naruto said, wiggling in her grasp. She dropped him on the ground and jumped onto the building adjacent to the school. She turned back to Naruto and shouted, “Fuck you!”. He made his patented kicked puppy face and Sakura ran away, feeling only a little bit bad.

Not only was she stuck with Naruto, she was stuck with a useless teacher and an unresponsive love interest. She went to go bother Ino, purely for rivalry purposes of course, but she wasn’t home. She decided to do something she hadn’t done in a long while.

Her parent’s graves were a little dirty, but she figured they’d probably like it more that way. She could imagine them complaining about how ‘unlived in’ the graves would feel if they were too clean. She had a perverse liking for this place, the trees here were old and the ground was soft and always a little wet. It was always quiet, but not silent, here where her parents had chosen to rest.

“I’m a genin now,” she said, to nobody, “I could probably move out of auntie’s now, but then I’d have to pay rent.” There was no response and she remembered suddenly why she never did this- it sucked. She sat on the mossy ground and pulled out a book on eighth level sealing that she technically wasn’t supposed to have (the librarian and her were friends) and began to read. She left when the sun began to go down, feeling more calm and steady than she had all day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also the naming convention is stolen from Howl's moving castle. Also sorry if my writing comes off as,,, stupid (it kinda is). :)))))


	3. In Which There is Much Fruitless Scheming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howdy, here's chapter three.

Sakura was not the most patient person there ever was and though she had convinced herself that there wasn’t really much she could do to prepare for a test she knew nothing about, she spent most of the night trying to anyway. That night she made a list of what she considered to be the most likely of tests, but as she got further and further into the night, they became more and more abstract (see pg 12, fighting a bear with the face of the man who owns the pickle shop next door). For each of these situations, she had a clear detailed battled strategy that was only a little bit drooled on. She went to bed at three in the morning, hoping that it would all be enough. 

She woke up the next morning tired, covered in ink stains, and feeling unbelievably stupid. She packed a lunch, looking longingly at all the food, put her long hair up, and left. She went on a quick run through the streets of the village, she liked it then, when there was no one about and the sun had yet to rise and everything was a calm dark blue. She arrived at the training grounds before anyone else, just as she had hoped. The area was unfamiliar and she needed to get the lay of the land (it wasn’t cheating to be prepared). 

First she searched for any pre-set traps, finding none, she set a few of her own, mostly to protect her hordes of weapons she was strategically placing in the area. Mentally, she separated each piece of the lay out into cubes marking each corner with a small seal, and labelled each of her hiding places accordingly, if the dipshit and pretty boy had let her, she would have drawn it all out and shared it with them when they arrived, but they didn’t and so that was that. E32 was the most dangerous of all her traps, so she was considering sharing that one with the boys if they were nice. 

It was times like these where she wished she had practised sealing a bit more. She knew the basics, but she wasn’t an expert by any means, as she had seen what happened to novices who mess about with seals without supervision. She thought resentfully of all the things she could have done if she could use some of the upper level seals she had been studying. And then she waited. And then she got bored and climbed a tree and then climbed all the trees in the area, and then she ranked them all in order of both comfort and camouflage, and used these results to pick the ideal hiding tree. The one between R7 and S7 was looking promising and she was considering setting up a few traps on it, when Sasuke showed up. 

Even disgruntled and sleepy, Sakura decided he looked very pretty. She rushed to him, about to tell him all about E32 and tree RS7, when he glared at her and made sort of ‘hn’ noise. She stopped and went back to her tree, determined not to tell him anything. She set up her trap and marched off to catalog more of the nearby forest, this time paying closer attention to things that she knew would be sources of food, were they to be stranded here for some time. She didn’t bother worrying about water, there was a huge ass river right next to the field. And then she waited, this time much more angrily as her teacher and Naruto were now officially late. She was becoming increasingly bored with being angry, when Naruto showed up. 

She was very ready to hit him on the head and yell at him, but the first thing he did was apologize. 

“I’m really sorry for yesterday Sakura! Believe it!” He shouted as he bowed (though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was sorry for). 

“Whatever not like I cared,” She said, smiling. “Do you want to hear about my plans?” When Naruto nodded, she went into a long spiel that he caught about one fifth of.

“...And then, if the trap next to A4 goes off, it’ll reset the ones in the surrounding blocks which will... oh and if you step on the pile of yellow leaves it’ll.... And I’ve picked a tree at T9 for you, I think you’ll like it but you have to remember....” He sort of fell asleep midway through, though in all fairness, Sakura was a horrible teacher.

“Naruto!” She hit him very hard when she saw this, and did not feel bad at all. He snorted, but remained asleep. After that she went and punched things until her teacher showed up, late and unapologetic.

“Good morning, class!” He said with a smile and a wave, as if he was not over four hours late. Naruto and her, for once of the same mind, shouted, “You’re late!” almost as if they had planned it. He ignored them and went on to explain his ridiculous bell test. If this old(?) man wanted her lunch, Sakura thought, he was going to have to pry it from her cold dead fingers (which she hoped was illegal).

Naruto (of course) attacked before their teacher had said to start, and Sakura got a glimpse of how powerful the man was. She was very certain that there was some sort of actual test hidden under the bell test but she wasn’t sure what it was. If they split the bells they’d each get sixty-six percent of a lunch and technically a D was passing, so perhaps they were supposed to do some sort of negotiation. Sakura wasn’t sure, but before she had much time to contemplate it, Hatake signaled for them to begin.  
Sakura scrambled for RS7, trying to recall as she ran what her plans had been for this sort of scenario. She was fairly certain she had made some, but she couldn’t recall much of the previous night let alone the detailed plan she had made for the eventuality that her teacher would try to play an intense game of keep-away. Arriving at RS7, she touched her hand to one of the small seals she had placed on the trunk of the tree. 

This particular technique was one she had invented herself, each seal she had placed was connected to one another, and when something passed between this connection, she was able to sense it, though interpreting that data could often be hard. From this she was able to discern where all three members of her team were. Sasuke was crouched in some bushes, and Naruto was confronting Hatake, though she didn’t really need her seals to know that (naruto was very loud). Then Hatake poked Naruto in the ass and pulled out a shitty romance book, which enraged Naruto further. She considered helping when she saw as he was once again defeated, but she didn't.

Sakura was sick of all her dipshit teammates, she decided, as she watched Sasuke attack their teacher fruitlessly. Naruto was strung up in a trap (not one of hers) and she could sense Hatake coming her way. Which, she thought, seemed fair as he had already thoroughly beaten all her teammates. He was under the impression though, she could tell, that she was not aware of him. She let him set a genjutsu over her, and then pretended to faint, letting her hand lie close to the trigger for one of her traps. 

A barrage of various weapons came at him from three sides as she activated it, and as he dodged, skillfully and while still reading his book, Sakura left a clone of herself lying on the ground. She replaced herself quickly with a stump behind Hatake, triggered another barrage of weapons and overlaid a quick genjutsu over herself. As he stepped backwards, dodging a kunai aimed roughly at the height of his neck (she had calculated), she reached as fast as she could for the bells. As her hand closed tightly around them, Hatake disappeared in a cloud of smoke, similar to Naruto’s clones and she heard a chuckle from some distance away.

Sakura felt almost as stupid as Naruto then, but she pushed past this feeling and touched her hand to one of the grid seals. Even then, she could not sense her teacher. She was about ready to simply activate all her traps at once, when she heard the loud ringing of an alarm clock to her far right. Roughly ninety percent of her traps had not been used and she felt that maybe she had simultaneously been over prepared and under prepared.

She trudged dejectedly over to the field, feeling incredibly foolish and even more incredibly angry.


	4. In Which Lessons Are Learned

Naruto got strung up on the log, which seemed fair in Sakura’s eyes. She and Sasuke had failed in total, less times than Naruto had, and he had tried to eat her lunch. She sat sullenly to the left of Naruto, and contemplated a different career path, possibly as a lumberjack or a Samurai. She bet Ino would be jealous if she became a Samurai. Her teacher arrived at the log, arms crossed and back carefully slouched. 

“I’ve got an announcement to make,” He paused dramatically. “None of you have to worry about going back to the academy.” He finished, equally dramatically. Naruto and Sakura shouted in excitement and Sasuke stared at Hatake, not ready to celebrate just yet. 

“Because none of you will ever be ninja.” Sakura felt that the judgment was a little harsh, he’d known them for less than a day. Naruto, predictably, shouted loudly in protest and would have likely attempted to attack Hatake were he not tied up. Sasuke, instead, ran towards their teacher(?), which Sakura thought was ridiculous considering how Hatake had handed his ass to him just a few minutes ago. Hatake took him down with a quick movement, and then sat on him, almost indifferently, which Sakura thought, sort of made it worse. 

“You lack, fundamentally, what it takes to become ninja,” He looked Naruto and her dead in the eyes. “You three are nothing but spoiled brats, ones who can’t even grasp the purpose of a simple exercise” Sakura had a feeling she had been pretty close when she’d guessed about the sixty-six percent, though being right was pretty useless, since they still failed. He announced seconds later that it had been about teamwork, yadda yadda, Sakura stopped listening. 

It made sense to her that the point had been teamwork, though there had been only two bells, there were many ways in which they could have gone about sharing them. Naruto shouted about something, which Sakura ignored as she continued to deliberate. At the very least this had been an exercise in learning how to feel like an idiot, she thought, as she tried to think of what she should have done differently. Before she could think too deeply on it, her teacher(?) caught her attention again.

“I’m giving you all one more chance, after lunch, to earn your place on a team. Sasuke, you and Sakura are allowed to eat, but if you feed Naruto, you’ll all be disqualified.” He said, and then disappeared into a cloud of careful smoke and leaves. Sakura wondered how stupid their teacher(?) thought they were. 

“Naruto, I’m gonna give you a third of my lunch. Open your mouth.” She said as she carefully separated out a portion of her lunch. 

“But Sakura didn’t you he-” He tried to say, when Sakura shoved a third (closer to a fourth) of her lunch in his mouth. 

“Eat.” She said, looking to make sure Sasuke was on the same page as she was. He was, once Naruto finished gulping down what was in his mouth, Sasuke shoved a third (closer to a fourth) of his lunch in Naruto’s mouth. Luckily Naruto had a big mouth, and Sakura was fairly certain he would be fine. Sakura was only a little surprised when their teacher (?) returned in a vengeful puff of smoke, and announced, “You Passed!”. Fuck yeah they did, Sakura thought as she cheered. 

“Meet me at the bridge at 7 tomorrow!” He said, while making a peace sign and winking. 

He walked away, and as Sakura watched her teacher leave, she contemplated the pros and cons of releasing Naruto from his log based prison. She turned to Sasuke, ready to ask him, but he had already began to trudge along after their teacher. His white pants were covered in splotches of grass and dirt, she noticed, as she observed him. Sakura thought for all that he was smart, he was also very stupid for, what kind of ninja wore white? She turned to Naruto.

“If you want me to untie you, you’ve gotta help me clean up all my traps n’stuff.“ She said to the squirming Naruto who was looking at her with his classic ‘pity me’ eyes. 

“Yeah, yeah I’ll help, I really have to pee though.” He said, looking desperately at her. 

“Gross.” she said, untying him from the log. He sprinted into the nearby bushes and Sakura very pointedly looked away as she began to collect her unused traps.  
With the help of Naruto and his clones, they finished in twenty minutes. Though Sakura wasn’t in the mood to admit it, she was grateful for Naruto’s help. 

“Do you want to go get lunch? Not a date, just lunch.” She said as she finished storing all her miscellaneous weapons and dusted off her hands. 

“Yeah! I know the best ramen place in the world! Let’s go!” He grabbed her hand and tugged her along, and she allowed herself to be tugged. 

They ate lunch together, and Sakura mostly enjoyed herself. Naruto was loud, which made her feel like she was allowed to be loud as well. As Naruto slurped up his fifth bowl, Sakura chanted enthusiastically from the sidelines while pounding on the bench. This reminded her of her times with Ino, possibly the loudest person Sakura had ever met. Sakura paid for Naruto’s and hers food, and then did a poor imitation of their teacher by disappearing in a cloud of decidedly uncareful smoke. She replaced herself with some dirt across the street, and hid as she watched Naruto look for her comically and watched as he eventually gave up. When he was gone she slinked herself shamefully out from behind an old garbage can. Covered in trash and dirt, she didn’t feel like much of a ninja at all. 

Sakura walked home mindlessly, stinkily exhausted from a long and terrible day. At least she had passed, she thought, kicking off her shoes and entering her home. Well, passed in a manner of speaking. It didn’t really feel much like a victory as she rubbed muscle cream on her neck and calves, which were aching from a long day of fruitless crouching and trap setting. She lay down on her bed, tired but not ready to go to sleep, and tried make sure she learned something from this experience. She listed the things she had done wrong, and the things she had done right, and how she was going to make sure to avoid the same mistakes again. Next time, she decided she would share her thoughts with her teammates, whether they liked it or not. Next time, she resolved, she would not hesitate to act. Next time, she would be better. 

She thought of Ino, as she fell asleep. She wondered how her rival’s first day as a ninja went. Knowing Ino, she had probably given her teacher hell. She went to sleep smiling at the thought of Ino’s world class fury.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm super duper happy so many people have left kudos on this, like genuinely it's buck wild.


	5. In Which There is Much Camaraderie

Sakura knew, logically, that there was a roughly zero percent chance that their teacher was going to arrive on time the next morning. She knew this, but found herself getting ready, groggily and resentfully, before dawn nonetheless. She justified it to herself as she crept out of her house into the dimly lit world. She figured normally, she would be doing this anyway, and if he didn’t show up, she could train on her own or perhaps sit with Sasuke. She jogged around the main streets, greeting the shop owners as they began to open up their stalls. Most of them knew her by now, and occasionally a few would toss her treats as she ran by them. 

She passed by the training fields on her route, expecting them to be empty, but in the distance, she saw a tall blonde figure laughing with her teammates. It was Ino, and as Sakura saw them guffawing at some joke, she stopped and blushed. Something about the scene made her uneasy. 

There was Ino, without her, happy as could be and she felt unduly embarrassed about it. Ino was her rival, her friend, and yet here she was, laughing with her teammates as if Sakura didn’t exist. It wasn’t fair, and thinking this, Sakura ran away in the direction she had come from. Sakura wondered if anyone in her life really needed her at all. It didn’t seem like it at the moment. She missed Ino, but it didn’t seem like Ino missed her. 

She arrived at the bridged, flushed from a combination of exertion, embarrassment and righteous anger. No one was there yet, so she sat down near the water and pulled out a sealing book from her handmade sealing scroll, which she was very proud of having created (it only very rarely destroyed what she put inside it). Though the book was interesting, she couldn’t focus on the words. Angrily, she shoved it back in her scroll and glared down at the river adjacent to her. 

Beneath her hands were large smooth stones and she grabbed some up in both her hands and tossed them as hard as she could into the running water, causing a large splash that she deftly avoided. Her rocks scared a bunch of small fish, and Sakura temporarily revelled in the feeling of having them at her mercy. And then she went back to feeling sorry for herself. 

Sasuke arrived a few minutes after Sakura, to the sight of her balancing precariously atop a tall stack of rocks. It had been an exercise of patience and perseverance to get all the rocks to stay still as she climbed up them and by the time she was on the top, she had mostly put Ino in the back of her mind. It took a considerable amount of concentration to hold this level of control, which she had in spades, until she saw Sasuke standing on the bridge staring at her. She lost just enough concentration to lose control of the bottomest rock in the stack, which sent her careening downward, towards the river. In a flash of inspiration, she directed a bit of chakra to her hands and knees as they hit the water. It held her above the water, just long enough for her to send a triumphant grin Sasuke’s way. And then she fell the rest of the way in. 

The water was cold, but only about a foot high where she landed. To her surprise, she heard a quick snort of laughter from up on the bridge. Before Sakura had the chance to fully comprehend the sight of Sasuke snorting, Naruto came running, laughing and pointing at both Sakura and Sasuke. 

“Sakura! You wouldn’t believe how stupid you look right now! Also did you hear the bastard snort!”

“Naruto, if you don’t shut up, I am going to murder you.” Sakura said, slowly rising from the river. 

“I didn’t snort, dipshit.” Sasuke said, face to face with Naruto. 

“No, you super did, right Sakura?” Naruto said, looking at Sakura who was approaching. Sakura took a second to consider her answer, on one hand, she found it undeniably hilarious that her love interest had snorted (and loudly at that) on the other hand, she was mad at Naruto. 

“Even Sasuke’s snorts sound better than your blabbering.” She decided on. Sasuke glared at her. 

“I said, I didn’t snort I-” He began. 

“Ha, Sakura agrees with me!” Naruto, as he said this, did a quick (and impressive) transformation, giving him the features of a pig version of Sasuke. He began to dance around Sasuke chanting, “Oink! Oink!”. Sasuke, an idiot just like Naruto, attacked him. Sakura too, deciding to be an idiot, gave chase after Naruto, who was laughing and oinking gleefully as he ran just out of Sasuke’s reach. 

Their teacher arrived lazily, a few hours later, startling Sasuke and Naruto as they attempted to balance on a stack of rocks. Sakura, who was now an expert at this task, jumped down gracefully when she saw Hatake arrive. She had wanted to make a good third impression on their teacher, but she thought the effect could perhaps be ruined by the fact that they were all covered in mud and various scratch marks (except Naruto, who looked suspiciously scratch free).

“Yo, looks like you guys got started without me.” He said, looking down on them from atop the bridge. 

“You’re late!” Shouted Naruto, who had trudged out of the river along with Sasuke, neither of them any more wet than they had been before falling in, as this was not the first time they had been distracted. Their teacher waved his hand dismissively at him and smiled. 

“Ah, I had big kid business to take care of. Looks like you guys got a bit ahead of yourselves, do you still have enough energy for a super important mission today?” 

Sakura glared at him while Naruto declared that of course he did, loudly and exuberantly. Sakura doubted they would be doing anything even approaching important, but she followed her teacher when he began to walk away nonetheless. As they walked, Naruto pestered their teacher with questions, to which he gave noncommittal hums and nods in answer, all while reading a book with a lewd cover. People glowered at Naruto as they walked through town and Sakura assumed that it was because he was so unrepentantly loud.

Sakura tried to spark up some conversation with Sasuke, but he ignored her, and Sakura was mostly okay with that. Sakura continued to talk anyway, as she enjoyed pretending he was listening. 

When they arrived at an old woman's house that needed weeding, Naruto was the only one surprised. The garden was astoundingly beautiful, but there were many, many weeds and Sakura, seeing this, idly rolled her sleeves up in preparation. 

“You’re late.” The gray haired woman said, waving her large cane at their teacher from up on her front porch. 

“I’m so sorry ma’am, my miscreant students held me up.” He put his hands up, as if to say ‘what can you do?’. As the three of them began to protest this statement, the old woman huffed and said, “Bullshit, Kakashi. I’ll be inside if you need me. Don’t fuck up my garden.” 

Sakura took an instant liking to this old lady and paid special care not to ‘fuck up her garden’. The old lady marched out of her house a while later and sat on a weathered white lawn chair next to where Sakura was dutifully pulling weeds out of a large flower bed. For a few minutes, she seemed content to stare intently at Sakura, who was beginning to sweat nervously under the scrutiny. Sakura breathed a large sigh of relief when she finally said, “You remind me of myself when I was younger.” And proceeded to dictate her life story to Sakura.

She had apparently been a ninja as well (which explained how she knew their teacher) and Sakura, finding this interesting, actually listened to what she said. In the background, she could hear her two teammates arguing and her teacher occasionally giggling at what ever part of the book he was reading. She felt startlingly content, in that moment.

When they were done, the old woman paid them, but held Sakura back for a moment, gently laying her hand on her shoulder. She discreetly handed Sakura a package of expensive kunai, and winked mischievously. Sakura thanked her with a large grin and caught up with her team. As they walked away, Sakura thought she might be able to forgive Ino for enjoying the company of her teammates so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooh boy. Sorry this took so long? I had trouble dealing with the fact that my writing isn't what I want it to be, but I decided to keep writing anyway. :)))))) Also you would not believe how many tries it took me to spell camaraderie.


End file.
